Additional Info

Nearby Theaters

This downtown theatre started with silent movies and then moved on to the talkies. It was a second run double feature thetare. It was a small narrow theatre with a small screen. It opened in 1911 and closed in 1940.

This theatre should be listed as closed/demolished. I used the Springfield-Greene County website and pulled up the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Commerical Street at this address. Springfield addresses went through a change in the late 1940s, and it can be difficult to pin down where things were. However, the fire insurance map shows the theatre, including the fact that it had a balcony. This is also the same place where the Princess Theatre was. I am not certain if it is the same building or not, but the site is the same one. I then pulled up the address from the county assessor page, and there is a vacant lot there. The two buildings surounding the old theatre are there, but the theatre itself is gone.

The Princess theater was located on the north side of Commercial Street a block or so west of the footbridge over the railroad yards that is still there. I am a native of Springfield and the theater was open as long I remember in the 1930s and up until after World War II. It was a third-run theater, but after the war was remodeled, renamed the Kickapoo and showed first-run movies simultaneously with the Gillioz or Electric theaters in the central business district. I believe it was open all through the 1950s and was only closed after many theaters feel victim to TV.